Big Buddha

Big Buddha is a must see site in Hong Kong. The statue sits three or four mountains away from the Tung Chung MTR station and can be reached by a slightly pricy (£26 return) cable car. It is possible to hike up to the Buddha and several of the exchange students seemed to have already hiked up to see the statue. So in our naivety, Amber and myself decided to wander up to see it.

We did receive some warnings: ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t hike up!’, ‘Thats a death sentence!’ etc. but neither of us are inexperienced walkers so how hard could it actually be?

I have never seen so many steps in my life, and I hope I never see that many steps again. They were never ending! It took us about an hour and a half to find the trail, and the actual hike was four solid hours of steps. Steps up, steps down, sideways steps, steps that were so sloped it could be debated whether you could actually call them a step. The worst part was that once you got over the first mountain (at the time, what we thought was the only mountain) it was just as hard to go back as it was to go on. We are now questioning whether the other students hiked back down from the statue, although that would have still been pretty horrific.

Luckily the weather was perfect hiking weather, sunny, dry, but very breezy. However we did pass several helicopter landing areas, presumably for when naive foreigners like ourselves attempt the trail with inadequate water or food supplies in the summer and have to be rescued.

So this is my warning to all, the Big Buddha trail is not for the faint hearted! Riding the cable car up and hiking back down would be easier, but not enough for me to consider doing either trip again.

In the end, it was worth it though!


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Gadael Ymateb
